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Whether it was that this undulating tester rolled the savage away to far distant scenes , I know not , but he now spoke of his native island ; and , eager to hear his history , I begged him to go on and tell it . He gladly complied . Though at the time I but ill comprehended not a few of his words , yet subsequent disclosures , when I had become more familiar with his broken phraseology , now enable me to present the whole story such as it may prove in the mere skeleton I give . CHAPTER 12 . Biographical . Queequeg was a native of Rokovoko , an island far away to the West and South . It is not down in any map ; true places never are . When a new - hatched savage running wild about his native woodlands in a grass clout , followed by the nibbling goats , as if he were a green sapling ; even then , in Queequeg’s ambitious soul , lurked a strong desire to see something more of Christendom than a specimen whaler or two . His father was a High Chief , a King ; his uncle a High Priest ; and on the maternal side he boasted aunts who were the wives of unconquerable warriors . There was excellent blood in his veins — royal stuff ; though sadly vitiated , I fear , by the cannibal propensity he nourished in his untutored youth . A Sag Harbor ship visited his father’s bay , and Queequeg sought a passage to Christian lands . But the ship , having her full complement of seamen , spurned his suit ; and not all the King his father’s influence could prevail . But Queequeg vowed a vow . Alone in his canoe , he paddled off to a distant strait , which he knew the ship must pass through when she quitted the island . On one side was a coral reef ; on the other a low tongue of land , covered with mangrove thickets that grew out into the water . Hiding his canoe , still afloat , among these thickets , with its prow seaward , he sat down in the stern , paddle low in hand ; and when the ship was gliding by , like a flash he darted out ; gained her side ; with one backward dash of his foot capsized and sank his canoe ; climbed up the chains ; and throwing himself at full length upon the deck , grappled a ring - bolt there , and swore not to let it go , though hacked in pieces . In vain the captain threatened to throw him overboard ; suspended a cutlass over his naked wrists ; Queequeg was the son of a King , and Queequeg budged not . Struck by his desperate dauntlessness , and his wild desire to visit Christendom , the captain at last relented , and told him he might make himself at home . But this fine young savage — this sea Prince of Wales , never saw the Captain’s cabin . They put him down among the sailors , and made a whaleman of him .
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